Salt; A World History - Book 2

I found the book Salt; A World History by Mark Kurlansky, to be a fascinating read. I like quirky histories. Kurlansky traces the impact of salt, the only rock we eat (as the back cover states) on human history. We need salt to live and so the obtaining of salt was one of the very first reasons humankind developed trade and engineering and even taxes (salt was often a great source of revenue for the state).

This book is filled with all sorts of interesting facts about salt. Kurlansky follows a chronological timeline, more or less. He starts with the Chinese and how very early on they learned to use natural gas (deposits of which quite often are near salt deposits) as fuel to boil brine to get salt. He takes us on a trip around the world to Europe, the Caribbean, India, and the Dead Sea, among other places, traveling through history and exposing the intricate connections that the need for salt has created.

Kurlansky tells us everything! Do you know why Salzburg is so named? Did you know the 'wich' ending on the name of many British towns signifies that a saltwork existed there? Did you know that Roman soldiers were often paid in salt and thus we have the word salary? In the Austro-Hungarian empire they actually held balls and built a beautiful chapel down in the salt mines. Did you know that in the Middle Ages the Church's required fast days drove a need for fish which in turn needed to be preserved, and so we have the great popularity of cod and herring. Transportation of salt was a major engineering problem. A large reason for the building of the Erie canal was to transport salt from Syracuse which used to be a great salt producing town!

I enjoyed learning about the Basques, how caviar is fished from the Caspian Sea and why Ghandi chose to walk across India to harvest salt by the sea as a symbolic protest against the British Empire. Really the whole thing was just so fascinating to me. Things I had never thought about or connected were revealed in this book.

Kurlansky's writing style took me a little while to get used to. He writes in kind of clipped vignettes at times. I could almost picture him researching for this book and writing little tidbits of information on index card after index card and then putting them in the order he thought worked. I could imagine him then transcribing each card onto his manuscript. His book reads like that. It felt especially choppy in the beginning and the very end, but the vast bulk of the book seems to relax and flow better. Kurlansky does get a little glib sometimes and as I was initially reading the book, I remembered about Ghandi and his march (not that I know much about Ghandi but I saw the movie with Ben Kingsley a long time ago!) and I thought, I bet Kurlansky is going to mention Ghandi's peculiar habit of sleeping (just sleeping apparently!) with young girls to test himself. Kurlansky reminded me a bit of Bill Bryson who never seems to have gotten over his adolescent delight in salacious facts (salacious! Get it! Derived from the Latin for salt!) and sure enough in the very first paragraph about Ghandi, Kurlansky manages to work that little detail in. So he was a bit predictable in that way.

But aside from the quibbles above, I heartily enjoyed this book. One little touch that I found delightful was that Kurlansky includes recipes from Ancient times to our current age. These are sprinkled throughout the book and I thought added a wonderful touch.

Kurlansky has also written other books on the Basque and on Cod as these things are related (as you discover in the book). I'd really like to read these books as well, especially the one on the Basques.

[A little aside: This book is published by Penguin. I read it in paperback and it was on the New York Times Bestseller list in 2002 or something. Yet I found on page 300 a misspelling of the word receiving! It is spelled recieving! How the heck did that typo get past the spell checker and the editors????? I had one of those 'what is the world coming to' moments when I noticed that. LOL!]

So this book gets two thumbs up! For more reviews go to 52 Books in 52 Weeks.